Then from the sides, silver bodies slither out of the waves. The island is sinking, the water edging closer and closer. The lake is getting so high that it goes over the banks. Arion marches with a group of landlocked warriors and they run into the lake.
“Behind you.” He points.
I throw myself on the ground as Archer’s fist grazes my cheekbone. He’s joined by four of his brothers. In the dark, all I can see are their yellow eyes, and I hear their screams as four winged men of the Alliance swoop down and pick them up. They go higher and higher and them throw them back into the sea as piles of black ooze.
“You,” Archer says. It’s the only word he can seem to get out. He blames me for Gwen. I blame me for Gwen too.
A hand rests on my shoulder and pulls me back. Kurt, wielding a sword he seems to have stolen from the enemy. It is curved and bloody. His violet eyes are focused and trained on the tall merrow.
“He’s mine,” Kurt says, pushing me aside and meeting Archer.
I run back in the thick of it, back to back with Yara and the River Clan. Their arrows never miss a target.
Then I can feel a voice in my head whispering in a strange tongue.
Shelly? I ask. She was the last one to speak in my head before. But the thoughts are distorted, like they’re not even human.
Above me, Nieve screams like a banshee, directing her chaotic orchestra. The tentacles of the kraken are long gone, the turtle swimming straight for Coney Island. It’s the sea horse that is unaccounted for. It’s the sea horse that’s in my head.
Doris? I say, unsure of myself.
I can feel her happiness at the recognition of her name. I remember what the nautilus maid told me. I could control my beast, no matter what. Chrysilla knew this. I think this was her own way of stopping her sister from taking the future into her own hands. Chrysilla left me with the connection to the sea horse.
This is so weird, I think. Doris neighs in response.
Uhh, where are you?
“Tristan!” Ewin from the Bronx yells at me. “Why are you standing so precariously close to danger? Seek cover!”
He shoves me behind a boulder where Kai is nursing a nasty cut across her ribs. Marty takes off his shirt and rips it to make a bandage.
“Jesus, Marty,” I say, “you’re paler than Nieve.”
Then he shifts into me and goes, “Better?”
“Cut that out!” I hate it when he does that. But he’s got me down to a T, for Tristan. Every cut and bruise, and the nose that didn’t get set properly.
Ewin pushes both of us away and picks up Kai.
“I’m fine,” she says. “Give me my sword back.”
Ewin turns to me for some support but I shrug. “I wouldn’t argue.”
The tusked warrior smiles at her and says, “You are perfect.”
She turns beet red but takes her sword and steps out from behind the boulder that shields us.
“Marty!” I say. “Don’t change.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“No, I mean, stay me.” I take the dirty cap off his head and throw it into the lake. He whimpers, probably contemplating if it’s worth his life to go jump into a lake infested with merrows. “Take off your pants.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” he mumbles.
“With your scales on,” I say. It’s like standing in front of a mirror.
A black shadow races toward us. “This was not part of the plan,” Frederik says when he sees what we’re doing.
“Can you tell which one is which?” Marty says.
Frederik looks back and forth at us, a wrinkle forming between his eyebrows. Then finally, he points at Marty and says, “Marty. You ate that tuna and it’s coming out of your pores.”
The good thing is that it took enough time for him to figure it out.
“Of course,” Marty says, his voice coming out of my mouth. “That’s your backup plan.”
“I need you to get her attention. Do something that makes her want to chase you. I need her to come down from up there.”
“What’ll you do after?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “Making this up as I go along.”
“Good.” Marty/Me nods. “I’m glad my whole life is dependent on your whims. I’m so glad I met you.”
I wait as he runs out into the lake area, his feet splashing ankle deep in the rising water. He waves his hands like he’s trying to land a plane. Then he throws some rocks at her.
I squeeze the bridge of my nose. “Oh, Marty.”
A moving shape catches my attention. A fin stuck beneath a boulder.
“Well, look at you,” I say. “Big bad oracle got squished by a rock?”
Lucine hisses at me, using her free fin to try to get me. “It’s a curse, you know, killing one of us.”
“I think you made that up,” I say. “The same way you made up those prophecies to Kurt. You never told my grandfather to choose him, did you? You told my grandfather to pardon his sister.”
She snarls at me, her emerald eyes as bright as beams. “You don’t have the nerve to hurt me.”
“Oh, I’m not going to hurt you,” I say. “She is.”
Thalia, who’s been standing behind Lucine, is caked in black blood.
“Kurtomathetis will never forgive you,” Lucine says, starting at the sword in Thalia’s hand.
“Kurtomathetis will never forgive you either.” I point to where Kurt is channeling all of his pent-up rage on his enemies.
Then I do a double take when I see me yelling, running backward as Nieve comes down from her whirlwind and races toward Marty/Me.
I break into a run. Marty/Me holds his sword up at Nieve’s face, and she stares at the blade curiously. She knows. She knows it’s not me.
Doris neighs in the back of my head, and this connection to the giant sea horse is like trying to pat my head and rub my stomach in the same direction at the same time. Waiting for you, she tells me.
I’m coming, I think. Hang on.
Rachel appears beside Marty in a puff of smoke. She raises the crossbow at Nieve’s face, the arrow snapping straight to her forehead.
Nieve blocks the arrow with the trident and the arrow’s trajectory switches, landing straight in the heart of a female vampire. She gasps with the shock of the wood sticking out of her chest. Rachel screams and reappears beside the girl. I didn’t know her name. I should’ve. She burns from the inside, her mouth still open, ready to take in a breath that isn’t there. In the breeze, she gets carried away into dust.
Nieve sees me, the real me. She looks back and forth between me and Marty, and that’s when I jump, grabbing her around her waist. Her nails dig into my back, but I push her into the lake where a whirlpool has started.
I need to take her away from here, away from my friends.
She holds on to me as we spin in a rush out of the Toliss tunnels.
Doris? I ask. Are you there?
But I’m met with quiet. Nieve pulls back the trident, her scream a long echo through the dark sea. I try to back away, but the currents pull me closer to her.
Nieve is confused as a neighing sound answers her back. I push upward toward the surface and Nieve follows. I hold out my hand, reaching for the creature swimming straight for me. Its skin is like a prism, part reptilian, part scales. Doris flicks her nose up and pushes Nieve away from me.
When I saw the original three kings ride the animals, they were the same size. It was true, that we used to be bigger. Doris is the size of a whale.
Hold on, her strange animal voice tells me.
And I do. I grab on to the slippery mane, bracing my knees against her neck as she rips through the surface. Above, the storm is worse than before. The sea is teeming with yellow eyes marching toward the beaches.
A sea dragon screeches nearby, swooping d
own toward us for a good bite of me. When I turn around, squinting against the sea spray, the sea horse’s tail bats at the sky and takes out the dragon. Its wings flap in the water. With another kick, the screeching beast loses consciousness.
Then Nieve is right beside us, grabbing on to the spikes of the giant turtle. She holds on as the creature swims toward the Coney Island shore. She aims the trident and blasts at us. Doris is quick and dives. The force of it almost knocks me sideways, but I hold on until we’re on the other side of the turtle.
“I have a faster ride than you,” I yell at Nieve.
I want you to get as close as possible. I need to get on that shell.
Doris shakes her head.
I have to get on that shell!
She makes a terrible sound but takes me closer. The storm has moved with us, Nieve controlling its forces. I remember once my grandfather told me that the old kings shaped the seas, the land masses, all with their storms. Nieve could do the same now. All she has to do is bury the shore beneath the waves.
You take care of that turtle, I command her. This she likes. See? We make a good team.
Doris kicks out with her claws, grinding against the shell like nails on a chalkboard. The turtle is slow because it’s so huge. When I’m on its back, I press my hand to the rough skin of its neck, the part exposed outside the shell. He’s bleeding where my sea horse has cut him.
“It’s not like you to hide,” I yell, turning in a circle. I can feel her near me, but she keeps herself out of sight.
“I do not hide from you.” Nieve holds on to a spike, the trident in her hand.
She’s worried. I can tell she’s worried because her pale blue eyes watch the surface of the water.
Now? Doris asks.
Not yet, I say.
I walk behind a spike, giving her enough time to strike me, but she doesn’t. She’s trying to figure out how I could command one of the giants without the trident. She’s trying to figure out why the full power of it isn’t hers.
Now? Doris asks.
Not yet, I say.
“You’ve got nothing left, you know,” I say. “You killed your own daughter. Kurt is with Archer. The rest—you don’t care about their lives, do you?”
She blasts me with the trident, but I stand sideways behind a spike. The turtle, on the other hand, feels it and moans.
I keep my back pressed to the rough bone. “I told Gwen this is what you were. I told her.”
“She was everything to me,” Nieve said. “Everything I have done was for her.”
“No, it wasn’t. Everything you’ve done was for you.”
“What do you know of our world?” She moves between the spikes, the smack of her feet getting closer, the mist turning into drizzle. “You have never known the wrath of the kings. You have never been on the other side of love.”
“You’re right,” I say. She’s surprised that I agree with her, but she’s right about that. “I have never known. All of my life, I’ve been pretty content not knowing. All of my life, I’ve had everything. Then it was taken away—by my grandfather, by you, by my own choices. But I’m going to get it all back.”
She laughs, a sound that sends the blood running through my veins, a laugh that threatens to swallow the whole world. “You are powerless, Tristan. I have the trident.”
I step out from behind the shell.
Now? Doris asks.
Nieve holds the trident over her head, and the three prongs reach up to the sky. The quartz crystal is full of light and angled at my face.
Now!
I don’t move out of the way.
Not right away at least. I’m not that crazy.
I don’t move for a breath, the quartz coming straight at me.
I grab it, and the light pulses in tune with my heartbeat. The turtle heaves as Doris crashes into him. Nieve and I tilt toward the sea but I hold on. I have my hands around the Scepter of the Earth and then I twist.
The weapon slides out and the trident breaks.
Nieve slips and falls at my feet, as if I’ve taken the wind out of her. That’s how it felt when I woke up in the Toliss chambers after the sea dragon grabbed me from the cliff. That’s what it felt like when I woke up and the scepter wasn’t there. Like something inside of me was missing, couldn’t be filled.
“This is still mine.”
She pushes herself up, but the turtle giant is unsteady and we both heave. She thrusts the trident to the sky and pulls on the lightning. But I’m faster. I can feel my sea horse’s power inside me. I push the quartz scepter through her heart.
The silver mermaid gasps, tendrils of lightning wrapping around her in bursts. Her bright red blood stains her white skin, and the silver scales dissolve instantly. I hold her wrist. Her flesh hardens beneath my fingers. Her head rolls back in a scream that scares the sky into silence.
When Nieve dies, the coral of her bone solidifies around the crystal of my scepter. Her hand around the rest of the trident.
When I pry the weapons out of her hands, what’s left of her snaps into brittle little pieces. There is no garden outside the Glass Castle; there are no tears of pearl. The sky trembles above me. Waves rise to meet my touch. I slide the quartz piece back into the trident and it’s complete once again. It’s like the world falls apart, like everything is rushing past me all at once, heavy on my shoulders. Is this what Nieve felt? Is this what my grandfather felt? It’s like thousands of voices linked around me. The cries of the sea people, the waves, thunder and lightning, and the deepest ends of the ocean. It’s part of me. For a moment, I can’t breathe.
The turtle giant moans, a long sad noise. I can feel its anger, its confusion. It’s been asleep for so long, and believe me, I know what it’s like to get woken up before I’m ready.
“It’s okay, boy,” I say. “Stop right there.”
Even though I’ve got this awesome trident, I’m not ready for the turtle giant to hit the coast. Its steps shake the ground and I nearly topple over. It kneels forward, lowering its head so I can walk off. Its eye is not as fierce as I saw in the vision of their battle.
“You must be tired.” I press my hand on its nose. The tide washes around us. “We just have one last thing to do, okay? Then you can be free.”
I don’t speak ancient turtle, but he opens his mouth and a deep horn blast rings out.
Behind me is the shore I’ve known forever. Ahead is the open sea that calls to me. When I close my eyes, I can feel the waves listening to me, pulling back from land. I search and search for the thoughts of the kraken. He’s off on the Jersey Shore, plucking out a group of crazy guys who thought it’d be fun to go body surfing into the middle of a storm.
“Alleas,” I tell the kraken, his name like a faint memory in the back of my thoughts. “Come back, we still have work to do.”
“Doris,” I say out loud. “Can you hear me?”
She neighs.
“The merrows. Stop them from coming on land.”
Together the turtle giant—his name pops into my mind, Krios—Krios and Doris dive back into the stretch between Coney and Toliss. But the merrows that don’t make it into their awaiting jaws still make it onto the shore, and I know this is far from over. The line of troops we kept to protect the shore is led by Dylan. Mermen and vampires fight with fang and sword against the intruders.
I take my trident and aim it, one, three, six, twelve. Lightning strikes, breaking the merrows into black, fleshy piles that get pulled in by the waves.
Dylan runs over to me and starts to kneel, and I press my hand on his shoulder.
“No time for that,” I say. “This isn’t over yet.”
•••
Dylan and I swim into the waves. I shift into my tail and this new power is a turbo boost. I reach the Toliss shore in minutes. My legs rip when I break the surface.
&nb
sp; After all the pandemonium, the silence on the beach is unnerving. I take in the momentary quiet of the beach, the darkness of the sky. I can feel the giants returning. Their steps shake the earth. All three of them touch my mind with quiet good-byes as they make their way into the ocean, free.
When I hear my name, I smile. Dylan’s finally caught up.
“Tristan, watch out,” he screams, wading out of the water.
Behind me is Leomaris, raising his dagger. I slam my trident at him like a baseball bat and he falls back, blood dripping out of his mouth.
“It’s over,” I tell him.
He spits on the white sand. “As long as you live, we will always fight. Every day, every night, we will come for you.”
I stare at him for a little bit. He doesn’t get up, his amber eyes so pained from losing his son. I was wrong about merpeople. I always thought they didn’t care about death, just because they didn’t leave traces behind. Except they do, and they will remember for ages.
“You will never know the truth of our ways,” he says. “You will never know, and you will die a young king.”
Bodies surround us now.
“I know,” I tell him, taking the trident and piercing his chest. I force myself to look at him, even though what I want to do is close my eyes, just close my eyes for a little while.
He crumbles into coral.
“Report,” I say to Frederik.
Black smudges cover his face. “It seems that when you defeated the silver mermaid, what was left of her army ran away.”
Surrounded by the landlocked, the Alliance, and what’s left of the Sea Court, I know what I have to do. I know that I’ve never been one to believe in prophecies. I believe that my fate is my own. I did this. I chose this. I wanted to fight for these people.
And I have fought.
And I have won.
I hold the power of the trident, the power of the king. Layla takes my hand, and in that moment, I am certain.
“This isn’t a congratulation speech,” I say. “This isn’t a congratulation speech because I’m not the one that’s won anything. Our homes are safe for now, if a little more crunchy than usual. But we will rebuild. We will rebuild the Glass Castle, this time with metal of some sort and hope for the best. We will rebuild the lake here, and the throne, and it’ll be better than it was before.” I turn to Penny. “The landlocked are free of their bindings. I release you and your children.
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